For technology companies looking to go public, winter is finally over. At least 14 tech firms have gone public on US exchanges this year, reports the financial advisory firm Renaissance Capital—10 of them in the third quarter alone.
There are more to come, says Rezwan Pavri, a partner at the Goodwin law firm’s Silicon Valley offices. “We’ve already see more tech IPOs launching or preparing to in September than during the rest of the year combined,” he tells Quartz. “We may be at the beginning of a good run for tech IPOs.”
Tech companies have raised $2.4 billion in their market debuts during 2016, reports Renaissance. The biggest tech IPO of the year belongs to the Japanese messaging company Line, which raised $1.1 billion in an offering on July 11.
Compared with the brutal reception of the last two years, markets are richly rewarding technology companies’ IPOs in 2016. Newly public tech companies stocks are up 90% on average, says Renaissance, with only two trading below their opening day IPO price. (One of them, SecureWorks, kicked off the 2016 tech IPO trend with its April 21 public offering.)
“Typically, you have to worry about one-day wonders, but many of these companies have had very strong trading and investors could still make money,” says Kathleen Smith, who manages IPO-focused funds at Renaissance Capital.
Back in 2015 and even in early 2016, new tech stocks such as Twitter, Fitbit, Etsy, and Box were crushed, in some cases sinking to less than half their IPO price (although several have since recovered ground). Today’s more conservative pricing led to valuations lower than comparable companies with similar revenue and growth. That seems to have assuaged investors’ concerns.
Meanwhile, the options for tech companies looking to raise cash are expanding. Private equity markets have buoyed late-stage valuations, and fueled the explosive growth of companies such as Uber. There is also a surge of merger and acquisition activity from corporations eying purchases as large as $10 billion. ”I don’t know one company that’s considering going public that isn’t getting a takeover offer right now,” said Pavri.
Correction: A previous version of this post misspelled the company name of Impinj.